The gist is that self-organized molecules (ie: life) will build themselves in a single chirality (organic molecules can exist in two mirror images, chirality is the term to distinguish them; think your right and left hands). Light that reflects from organics will contain a tell-tale signature (polarization) depending on the chirality. This could be used to detect evidence of "life" on other planets. Clever.

In other news, my refurbished MacBook had to have its hard drive AND RAM replaced since I've bought it. So I'm pretty disappointed that Apple QA dropped the ball on that, but I can't complain too much because both repairs were free since it's been <1 yr and done on the spot at the Apple Store in Laval.

Indie game developer Cliff 'cliffski' Harris has written a great design postmortem recounting the development of his new "life simulation" game Kudos. It's a fun read, with screenshots to boot. A snippet:

Back then, I decided to call the game 'milo' partly after my 2nd cat, named in turn after Milo Minderbinder You will control milo's life, and more specifically milo's brain. At this point, the game is slightly a reflection of how miserable and depressed I was after watching Donnie Darko whilst drunk. If you actually enjoy this film, rather than it making you want to slash your wrists, your clearly in way better mental shape than me. The game has a slightly bizarre and dark feel to it in my mental design doc at this stage, you may notice the readouts for 'depression' and 'aggression'. This is not a happy game. I idly wonder about coding the AI for making your character become psychotic, or suicidal. I consider milo having his own blog. I wonder how close I can get him to passing a turing test. I decide that's enough wine for tonight.